I'm trying something that might appear a little self-aggrandizing or precious but that I really think makes sense. I'm using one of the new online vanity/self-publish/print-on-demand services to print drafts of my books for my readers to comment on instead of just printing out the typescript.
After comparing prices and other factors I decided to use Lulu.com. What I should be getting in the mail in about a week is a few copies of a trade-paperback size version of my novel, formatted with margins customary for trade size, front and back, and perfect bound. I'm expecting to be pretty cheap-looking, on the cheapest possible paper with one of their boilerplate cover designs. (I could have taken the time to design or have designed a better cover, and I could pay more for premium paper.)
The first major reason I decided to go with this method is price plus convenience. My 294-page typescript at $.9/pg cost almost $30 to print at the copy shop, plus between $6-13 to mail it to a reader if they don't live nearby. Plus the cost of a mailer or the hassle of finding a box in the basement to pack it in. It's almost always at least two trips in the car.
Lulu prints it for around $10. (In the layout I chose, it comes to 234 pages.) Shipping is $5 on the low end for one copy. The big drawback is that I might lose a week -- still to be seen -- waiting for it to be printed and mailed. I sprung for some faster and more expensive shipping, and even with that it is a savings. Plus they have lots of different coupons floating around for percent off the order or free shipping over a minimum amount. I ended ordering 3 copies to be sent to me to hand deliver to readers nearby and another single copy to be mailed directly to another reader. Hopefully everyone will have them in their hands by this time next week. I might have lost a little time through this method, and maybe I'll end up thinking the week was more important than the $100 or whatever I saved.
The second major reason I decided to go with this method is because I have a hunch it will actually help my readers give me better feedback. For naive readers who don't normally work with draft typescripts, having a ream of copy paper dropped in their laps might be intimidating, and I think that might affect how they read it. It might be even more of a factor with children, which is an issue with some of my readers, since it's a children's book.
For example, I often coach my "naive" readers on how to develop feedback and give it, since they might be afraid to say anything critical. One of the ways I do that is to ask them to imagine that they are reading a real published book that they paid $15 for. Then I ask them to mark in the margin as they go along whenever they become aware that they are not in fact reading a published book -- where the illusion is broken. When you're reading 300 pages of single-sided copy paper, which looks more like homework than a book, it's harder to get into the illusion to begin with. Children might not understand that this thing is supposed to be a book instead of a chore.
This is all just a crazy theory. I have no idea if it's really true. But it just makes sense to me somehow that the more I can create the familiar experience of reading a book, the better feedback I'll get on it.
The process is maybe is just slightly time consuming, but not in a way that I mind. I had to download a template for the book size I chose. Then I pasted the typescript in there. Then I did some fussing with where the formatting I had didn't carry over. (Usually where it involves margins; I had to re-center the chapter titles.) I full justified the margins, fiddled with the line spacing. (I know for professional designers, this is a key issue, and I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just guessed. Same with the type size.) Assuming any future revisions happen in my usual typescript, then I'll have to redo all this work to update what is getting printed by Lulu.
Then I wrote a kind of intro letter explaining what this thing was. That replaced the memo I usually include with the printed typescript to focus the comments from my readers. Then I uploaded it to the website, which involved creating an account for myself -- careful to make the project private instead of for sale to the public. Then I designed the cover. Select from one of the template styles. Select a color. Select a layout. Type in the title and other info. (I have a draft summary, so I pasted that on the back cover like you would see on a paperback.) None of this needed to take much time, but I indulged myself in making it look as good as I could. I even played with having a cover illustration by doing a quick search on google images, saving one, uploading it Lulu and pasting it onto my cover.
It occurs to me that there's a third benefit to this. I've found that just the act of printing out my book in the past forces me to imagine how other people must see it, which fires up different critical faculties and helps me see it in a new light. Same for putting it in the mail to someone or just knowing that it's in someone else's possession. With this I think just seeing my work perfect bound with wide margins, etc. -- impersonating a book, basically -- will make me see it in a different light and give me some ideas about what else it needs.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Done . . . in a sense
As I've said before, the lines drawn between drafts are arbitrary, and the "finish line" itself is somewhat arbitrary. I won't really think of it as done until it gets accepted for publication, the publisher is no longer accepting input from me and it goes to press. But right now -- since yesterday morning -- I do think of the book as done in an important sense, though that other finish line is still a long way away.
One, I finished what I was calling the fifth draft. In getting through that I probably had some of my lowest moments. For about two weeks straight I did nothing but go over the first four chapters repeatedly trying to deal with the preface/exposition/starting problems that I wrote about earlier. It was a lot of heavy rewriting and revising, printing it out, discovering it wasn't working and trying again. I was convinced I had written a catastrophic weakness into the opening, but I finally found the solution I was looking for, and I finally got my wife's approval of it.
Second, I finished up addressing every problem in the book I know how to identify on my own without sending it out in the world to some more amateur or novice readers and to hear what they think. By amateur or novice readers, I mean people who didn't see it in earlier drafts (e.g. not my wife), or people who I'm not expecting to coach me on the next draft (not other writers). It's ready for purely readerly responses -- including from child readers, since this is a children's book. I have some readers like this lined up and have set in motion the wheels that will put the work as-is in their hands for a response.
Of course, their feedback will lead to more work and the first of hopefully very few additional drafts, but I can't help thinking of this as crossing a threshold that, while not meeting the strict definition of "done," feels like it deserves the badge anyway.
And I met my timeline, too. Back in January when I was starting the rewriting and revision process, I anticipated that it would happen in fewer drafts in name but with essentially this kind of work in character, and my goal was to achieve that before the end of the college semester. Yesterday afternoon is when I collected final materials from my students. Later that afternoon I handed a printout of the typescript to one of my readers.
That means it took just about 8 1/2 months exactly with breaks and it almost exactly coincided with the academic year. As noted before, I forgot to record my exact start date, but it was approximately Sept. 1, 2010. The drafting vs. rewriting was split almost exactly down the middle. The first draft was done 4 months and a week after I started.
For the record, it is now 294 pages (with front matter) and 70,355 words. I had it down close to my goal of 65,000 words at one point. In the last few drafts it yo-yo'd between 66k and 71k. The last revisions I made in the last week pushed it up about 2k to the current. I'm not too worried about it being too long. 65k was a good goal, but 70k doesn't read too long I think. In general, I think it reads pretty fast. I was aiming for what I imagined to be a sixth-grade reading level, and I think I shot a little low. And, apart from the technical reading level, I think it's pretty punchy. It's certainly dialogue heavy, which always reads faster.
I'm not sure when the whatever is next will be. It will surely take a few weeks at least and probably half the summer to hear back from some of these readers. I'm sure it will be good for the work to let it sit as long as possible. I probably ought to have let it sit more during the revisions so far than I did. Of course, I'm eager to get going to the next stage, but I guess I'm feeling less impatient than I have between other drafts. It feels kind of like graduation day and the start of a deserved summer break, not least because of the coincidence with the academic calendar, and I'm not looking for excuses to start draft 6 tomorrow.
The schedule for the next step will be partly determined by the other project that I plan to focus on during the first month of the summer. More on that another time.
One, I finished what I was calling the fifth draft. In getting through that I probably had some of my lowest moments. For about two weeks straight I did nothing but go over the first four chapters repeatedly trying to deal with the preface/exposition/starting problems that I wrote about earlier. It was a lot of heavy rewriting and revising, printing it out, discovering it wasn't working and trying again. I was convinced I had written a catastrophic weakness into the opening, but I finally found the solution I was looking for, and I finally got my wife's approval of it.
Second, I finished up addressing every problem in the book I know how to identify on my own without sending it out in the world to some more amateur or novice readers and to hear what they think. By amateur or novice readers, I mean people who didn't see it in earlier drafts (e.g. not my wife), or people who I'm not expecting to coach me on the next draft (not other writers). It's ready for purely readerly responses -- including from child readers, since this is a children's book. I have some readers like this lined up and have set in motion the wheels that will put the work as-is in their hands for a response.
Of course, their feedback will lead to more work and the first of hopefully very few additional drafts, but I can't help thinking of this as crossing a threshold that, while not meeting the strict definition of "done," feels like it deserves the badge anyway.
And I met my timeline, too. Back in January when I was starting the rewriting and revision process, I anticipated that it would happen in fewer drafts in name but with essentially this kind of work in character, and my goal was to achieve that before the end of the college semester. Yesterday afternoon is when I collected final materials from my students. Later that afternoon I handed a printout of the typescript to one of my readers.
That means it took just about 8 1/2 months exactly with breaks and it almost exactly coincided with the academic year. As noted before, I forgot to record my exact start date, but it was approximately Sept. 1, 2010. The drafting vs. rewriting was split almost exactly down the middle. The first draft was done 4 months and a week after I started.
For the record, it is now 294 pages (with front matter) and 70,355 words. I had it down close to my goal of 65,000 words at one point. In the last few drafts it yo-yo'd between 66k and 71k. The last revisions I made in the last week pushed it up about 2k to the current. I'm not too worried about it being too long. 65k was a good goal, but 70k doesn't read too long I think. In general, I think it reads pretty fast. I was aiming for what I imagined to be a sixth-grade reading level, and I think I shot a little low. And, apart from the technical reading level, I think it's pretty punchy. It's certainly dialogue heavy, which always reads faster.
I'm not sure when the whatever is next will be. It will surely take a few weeks at least and probably half the summer to hear back from some of these readers. I'm sure it will be good for the work to let it sit as long as possible. I probably ought to have let it sit more during the revisions so far than I did. Of course, I'm eager to get going to the next stage, but I guess I'm feeling less impatient than I have between other drafts. It feels kind of like graduation day and the start of a deserved summer break, not least because of the coincidence with the academic calendar, and I'm not looking for excuses to start draft 6 tomorrow.
The schedule for the next step will be partly determined by the other project that I plan to focus on during the first month of the summer. More on that another time.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Aarrgghh!
So frustrated.
My supposed solution to the opening didn't survive even a glance from my wife. The flashback, even with the bright lines of chapter breaks around it, feels too confusing still.
So I'm making another run at combinations of previously rejected solutions. One, I just cut out the preface. Two, the book starts with Chapter 1 in the present action. Three, "essential parts" of the preface are woven into the first chapter as exposition and flashback, hopefully without too much sense of interruption. Four, the major scene from the preface is salvaged almost in its entirety by putting it in a spot later on Chapter 3 where I had never considered it before.
The result, so far, by the way, is reduction of about 1,200 words. I guess that must be the sum of the preface that didn't cut pasted in anywhere.
It's a messy patch job for now, and I have no real sense of whether or not it works. Does the book get to the action soon enough? (Which was the whole point of having the preface.) Does the escalation of the character's understanding of her problem still move at the right pace? Does the interplay of internal and external conflict still work? Does it even make sense anymore at a literal level?
And my careful balance of the chapter lengths . . . gone. Ch. 3 is now 19 pages.
I'm a little bit exhausted by the work. And I'm not feeling great about having to do it. I want this problem to be behind me so badly.
My supposed solution to the opening didn't survive even a glance from my wife. The flashback, even with the bright lines of chapter breaks around it, feels too confusing still.
So I'm making another run at combinations of previously rejected solutions. One, I just cut out the preface. Two, the book starts with Chapter 1 in the present action. Three, "essential parts" of the preface are woven into the first chapter as exposition and flashback, hopefully without too much sense of interruption. Four, the major scene from the preface is salvaged almost in its entirety by putting it in a spot later on Chapter 3 where I had never considered it before.
The result, so far, by the way, is reduction of about 1,200 words. I guess that must be the sum of the preface that didn't cut pasted in anywhere.
It's a messy patch job for now, and I have no real sense of whether or not it works. Does the book get to the action soon enough? (Which was the whole point of having the preface.) Does the escalation of the character's understanding of her problem still move at the right pace? Does the interplay of internal and external conflict still work? Does it even make sense anymore at a literal level?
And my careful balance of the chapter lengths . . . gone. Ch. 3 is now 19 pages.
I'm a little bit exhausted by the work. And I'm not feeling great about having to do it. I want this problem to be behind me so badly.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Starting draft 5, struggling with opening
It's been an eventful week. My wife read the complete book, as I wrote about earlier, and my new writing group had its first meeting. I'll write about the mechanics and the vibe of that some other time, but it was really really nice to talk seriously about our work together.
The important thing for now is that they read and commented on the first 20 pages. As it happens, those were positioned as Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 when I gave it to them and as Preface and Ch. 1 when I gave them to my wife. I've talked about my trouble getting the story started, and unfortunately this experiment showed no difference in that positioning. Both versions read with the same "start/re-start" problems.
So this morning -- the official beginning of my work on draft 5 -- I've been trying to tackle that, and it's not going great. First, I tried just cutting the preface to do without it. (I start another "experiment" doc in these cases and when I settle on something paste the result back into my main doc. ) That idea was no good, because there's stuff in the preface I really need. I tried changing where in the timeline of the story the preface event happens -- so it's during the present action and basically the second or third major episode instead of prefatory in tone or placement. That creates a bunch of other problems, though. I tried cutting it but blending in the stuff I didn't want to lose as exposition in pieces, but that takes us out of scene too much in the Chapter 1/present action.
Finally, I tried just swapping the preface (which, if I haven't made this clear, takes place two years before the main story) with Chapter 1. So the preface is called Chapter 2 and is basically an extended interruption/flashback from Chapter 1. Then there's a hard chapter break and we resume the story back in the present with Chapter 3, f.k.a. Ch. 2.
Described that way, it sounds awful, but so far that looks like the best solution. It's certainly the most intelligible. I'm going to let it sit and see if I can get feedback from my wife on it. I really only did a patch job, so if I go with this, it will require some a lot of revision to straighten out detail consistency and redundancies.
If this doesn't work, then what I'll need to do is not just rewrite the opening but completely re-envision it -- not a job I'm anxious to do. If my students could see me now, they'd be getting a chuckle, because it looks like I'm evading the kind of hard work that I've been haranguing them to do.
I have a feeling this is mostly going to be set to stew over the rest of the weekend without much actual work. That's OK. I need some more distance on it before really tackling the next draft. I just wish I was able to work on two novels at once so I could keep myself busy with the time I have.
The important thing for now is that they read and commented on the first 20 pages. As it happens, those were positioned as Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 when I gave it to them and as Preface and Ch. 1 when I gave them to my wife. I've talked about my trouble getting the story started, and unfortunately this experiment showed no difference in that positioning. Both versions read with the same "start/re-start" problems.
So this morning -- the official beginning of my work on draft 5 -- I've been trying to tackle that, and it's not going great. First, I tried just cutting the preface to do without it. (I start another "experiment" doc in these cases and when I settle on something paste the result back into my main doc. ) That idea was no good, because there's stuff in the preface I really need. I tried changing where in the timeline of the story the preface event happens -- so it's during the present action and basically the second or third major episode instead of prefatory in tone or placement. That creates a bunch of other problems, though. I tried cutting it but blending in the stuff I didn't want to lose as exposition in pieces, but that takes us out of scene too much in the Chapter 1/present action.
Finally, I tried just swapping the preface (which, if I haven't made this clear, takes place two years before the main story) with Chapter 1. So the preface is called Chapter 2 and is basically an extended interruption/flashback from Chapter 1. Then there's a hard chapter break and we resume the story back in the present with Chapter 3, f.k.a. Ch. 2.
Described that way, it sounds awful, but so far that looks like the best solution. It's certainly the most intelligible. I'm going to let it sit and see if I can get feedback from my wife on it. I really only did a patch job, so if I go with this, it will require some a lot of revision to straighten out detail consistency and redundancies.
If this doesn't work, then what I'll need to do is not just rewrite the opening but completely re-envision it -- not a job I'm anxious to do. If my students could see me now, they'd be getting a chuckle, because it looks like I'm evading the kind of hard work that I've been haranguing them to do.
I have a feeling this is mostly going to be set to stew over the rest of the weekend without much actual work. That's OK. I need some more distance on it before really tackling the next draft. I just wish I was able to work on two novels at once so I could keep myself busy with the time I have.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Done with fourth draft
I'm calling an end to the fourth draft and doing the "save as" and "create a new folder" and all that stuff to establish the fifth draft, which I'll start soon.
These are really arbitrary boundaries between one boundary and another. For example, during the "fourth draft" I went all the way through the manuscript twice. How is that not two different drafts? It has something to do without how much of a mental reset I'm doing. I guess a lot of the time, the stuff I'm doing on the second time through is stuff that I was aware needed to be done and that I postponed, so I consider it part of the same workload. I'm just not doing it in perfect sequential order. Like if a page needs for a paragraph to be added, a decision about whether to change a character's name, close fine editing of the sentences that are there and a read to see if there's a way that I can punch up the language, I might have the energy to focus on about half of that on one pass through and leave the other half for later. But since I was aware of all of it, I think of it as work on the same draft. Then, at a certain point, I either am aware of no problems any more or aware only of problems that I feel like I need some psychic distance from in order to tackle, then I feel like I'm moving from one draft to another.
That's where I am now. One major thing that has happened is that my wife read the entire typescript, front to back, for the first time over the weekend. (She had heard me read the first draft aloud as it was written and had looked at specific sections as I struggled with revision.) Discounting some for her bias, she has me convinced that I'm close to finished. The changes she outlined are not a lot of work, so my plan is for draft 5, whenever I get to it, to be a very short process and to look not terribly different from draft 4. (There were probably more differences between the two different passes of draft 4.) I have another reader lined up and I want to get it into their hands within a couple weeks if I can.
I'm also getting feedback this week from my writer's group, but that's only on a small section of it.
If I'm lucky, I'll get in three working days this week, but I don't know.
In any case, by not exactly the route I had planned, I'm getting to the destination in about the timeline I had hoped for last January -- to have it "done" by the end of this semester, which is in about 2 1/2 weeks. That's assuming I don't discover a crisis during work on the draft 5.
These are really arbitrary boundaries between one boundary and another. For example, during the "fourth draft" I went all the way through the manuscript twice. How is that not two different drafts? It has something to do without how much of a mental reset I'm doing. I guess a lot of the time, the stuff I'm doing on the second time through is stuff that I was aware needed to be done and that I postponed, so I consider it part of the same workload. I'm just not doing it in perfect sequential order. Like if a page needs for a paragraph to be added, a decision about whether to change a character's name, close fine editing of the sentences that are there and a read to see if there's a way that I can punch up the language, I might have the energy to focus on about half of that on one pass through and leave the other half for later. But since I was aware of all of it, I think of it as work on the same draft. Then, at a certain point, I either am aware of no problems any more or aware only of problems that I feel like I need some psychic distance from in order to tackle, then I feel like I'm moving from one draft to another.
That's where I am now. One major thing that has happened is that my wife read the entire typescript, front to back, for the first time over the weekend. (She had heard me read the first draft aloud as it was written and had looked at specific sections as I struggled with revision.) Discounting some for her bias, she has me convinced that I'm close to finished. The changes she outlined are not a lot of work, so my plan is for draft 5, whenever I get to it, to be a very short process and to look not terribly different from draft 4. (There were probably more differences between the two different passes of draft 4.) I have another reader lined up and I want to get it into their hands within a couple weeks if I can.
I'm also getting feedback this week from my writer's group, but that's only on a small section of it.
If I'm lucky, I'll get in three working days this week, but I don't know.
In any case, by not exactly the route I had planned, I'm getting to the destination in about the timeline I had hoped for last January -- to have it "done" by the end of this semester, which is in about 2 1/2 weeks. That's assuming I don't discover a crisis during work on the draft 5.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Regulating the chapters
So far this week the work has gone like I planned it. Two days off for other stuff, and two days on the book. I worked on that troublesome section like I planned -- on paper and then on the screen -- and since then have been sweeping up other messes.
Mainly I've been following through on some ideas for how the chapters are organized. I think a couple drafts ago I noted that I had chapters as short as 4 pages and as long as 22. I got things a lot better organized than that awhile ago, but I still have as of now a range of 8 to 18, with a bigger stronger cluster around 11 pages. Before this morning I had gotten it down from 32 chapters to 27 chapters.
I had been considering the idea that my first chapter should really be positioned as a preface, and I made that change today. In addition to renumbering everything, it meant fussing a little with the tone in the openings of the preface and the new chapter 1.
And I had been considering re-slicing the breaks between some other chapters, which I went ahead with today. That leaves me with 24 numbered chapters plus the preface for a total of 25.
Meanwhile, every time I make these changes, I'm revising my outline. Too OCD, maybe, but it makes me feel better to know it's up to date. It includes details on page-length of each chapter, which changes whenever I combine or break chapters.
Thus I know the spread that I detailed above, and I know the flow is much more regulated. It also shows me some opportunities for revision. I had two chapters that are 18 pages long. They weren't necessarily too long, but that seemed as good a place to start with shortening the book as any. I tackled one of them and knocked out 3 pages and 1,000 words this afternoon. I plan to try the same with the other tomorrow. That would mean every chapter is between 8 and 15 pages, which seems really nifty.
That's tomorrow, and the end of the week, and then . . . I don't know. I'm getting close to printing it out again for a fresh read and/or to share with my next reader. Maybe it's time.
With all my revising, the total had crept up to 71,600 words. I'm at 70,600 words now. I doubt that I'll get it back down to my original goal of 65,000 words, but I plan to close the gap some.
Mainly I've been following through on some ideas for how the chapters are organized. I think a couple drafts ago I noted that I had chapters as short as 4 pages and as long as 22. I got things a lot better organized than that awhile ago, but I still have as of now a range of 8 to 18, with a bigger stronger cluster around 11 pages. Before this morning I had gotten it down from 32 chapters to 27 chapters.
I had been considering the idea that my first chapter should really be positioned as a preface, and I made that change today. In addition to renumbering everything, it meant fussing a little with the tone in the openings of the preface and the new chapter 1.
And I had been considering re-slicing the breaks between some other chapters, which I went ahead with today. That leaves me with 24 numbered chapters plus the preface for a total of 25.
Meanwhile, every time I make these changes, I'm revising my outline. Too OCD, maybe, but it makes me feel better to know it's up to date. It includes details on page-length of each chapter, which changes whenever I combine or break chapters.
Thus I know the spread that I detailed above, and I know the flow is much more regulated. It also shows me some opportunities for revision. I had two chapters that are 18 pages long. They weren't necessarily too long, but that seemed as good a place to start with shortening the book as any. I tackled one of them and knocked out 3 pages and 1,000 words this afternoon. I plan to try the same with the other tomorrow. That would mean every chapter is between 8 and 15 pages, which seems really nifty.
That's tomorrow, and the end of the week, and then . . . I don't know. I'm getting close to printing it out again for a fresh read and/or to share with my next reader. Maybe it's time.
With all my revising, the total had crept up to 71,600 words. I'm at 70,600 words now. I doubt that I'll get it back down to my original goal of 65,000 words, but I plan to close the gap some.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Done, but not really, with fourth draft
If I was kidding myself, I could claim to be done with this draft. Only in the sense that I turned through the last page of the printed out typescript and entered the changes marked there into my newest computer file. But like I was thinking about yesterday, what I really did was push through to the end on the superficial stuff so I can circle back around to focus on some harder stuff. I think I'll do that after breaking for the weekend. Actually a little longer because of some distractions from my paying work. I'll pull out the relevant chapters and just read them with as fresh a perspective as I can.
After that, I'm not sure, but I I'd like to see if I can find sentence level improvements before calling an end to this draft. I'll have to think about it. And there's always a certain amount of sweeping up to do of miscellaneous notes and corrections. Gotta check for consistency on the name of the character remaining when I combined two. Stuff like that. Renumbering the chapters. Anyway, I doubt it will be more than another week total.
After that, I'm not sure, but I I'd like to see if I can find sentence level improvements before calling an end to this draft. I'll have to think about it. And there's always a certain amount of sweeping up to do of miscellaneous notes and corrections. Gotta check for consistency on the name of the character remaining when I combined two. Stuff like that. Renumbering the chapters. Anyway, I doubt it will be more than another week total.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Impatient
I have about 45 pages to go to get through my notes on this draft, but I don't see it happening before the end of this week. I'm in a section that needs more careful attention, and I find that I keep neglecting it because I'm always impatient to get done when I'm at this stage. I need to slow down and take each part of it fresh, one day at a time and not to try to force it. It's too easy to talk myself into accepting the material as it is instead of pushing myself.
I have an idea that I could fix that process problem by going ahead and pushing through to the end of the draft and then returning specifically to this section -- printed out fresh to read with a clear mind -- instead of starting at the beginning and working my way up to this section when I'm in a state of exhaustion and impatience. Maybe I'll try that.
Funny the mind games a writer has to play with themselves to sneak up on the work.
I have an idea that I could fix that process problem by going ahead and pushing through to the end of the draft and then returning specifically to this section -- printed out fresh to read with a clear mind -- instead of starting at the beginning and working my way up to this section when I'm in a state of exhaustion and impatience. Maybe I'll try that.
Funny the mind games a writer has to play with themselves to sneak up on the work.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
A little slower
I hit a section that needs more careful attention. That combined with distractions from real life are slowing me down. Right now I'm at page 152, so slightly over half way through. So far I've grown it by about 18 pages and 4,500 words. If I end up adding a total of 9-10,000 words, I'm going to be pretty upset. I think I've done the major sections that require new material, though. Everything from here on should just be the "creeping" additions, though I shouldn't underestimate those.
What I've been struggling with is the transition between Part I and Part II, which comes almost exactly at the half-way point in the book. The problem is that there isn't much in the way of suspense or unresolved mystery to call the reader over the bridge. I wrap up too many of the problems without establishing enough sense of drama about the main conflicts that arc through the whole story. I think I've got good fixes in place now, though, again, I won't really know until I've let it all sit for a time and then read it again fresh.
I'm also getting rid of a character by combining two. They were too similar, and their separate roles in the plot could easily be carried out by one person.
What I don't understand is what Charles Dickens did in those situations when he was writing in serial form. You get 2/3 of the way into a story and then realize you could/should pull one character out of the story entirely or that you haven't laid the groundwork for what you're going to have him do.
What I've been struggling with is the transition between Part I and Part II, which comes almost exactly at the half-way point in the book. The problem is that there isn't much in the way of suspense or unresolved mystery to call the reader over the bridge. I wrap up too many of the problems without establishing enough sense of drama about the main conflicts that arc through the whole story. I think I've got good fixes in place now, though, again, I won't really know until I've let it all sit for a time and then read it again fresh.
I'm also getting rid of a character by combining two. They were too similar, and their separate roles in the plot could easily be carried out by one person.
What I don't understand is what Charles Dickens did in those situations when he was writing in serial form. You get 2/3 of the way into a story and then realize you could/should pull one character out of the story entirely or that you haven't laid the groundwork for what you're going to have him do.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Cruising
I'm still in the fast-moving stage as I discussed yesterday. Got through about 50 pages this morning. And I stumbled on one little change in a detail that, when I follow the ripples of it through the plot so far, add a lot of fun nuance, so I'm really pleased with the work this morning. It feels like I amped up the power quite a bit with some small changes.
So I'm at a little less than half-way through the whole thing in 5 days. I'll guess 5 days plus the weekend to get through the remainder. I do expect to hit some more slow spots later needing more careful attention as the conflicts I set up get resolved.
So I'm at a little less than half-way through the whole thing in 5 days. I'll guess 5 days plus the weekend to get through the remainder. I do expect to hit some more slow spots later needing more careful attention as the conflicts I set up get resolved.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Writers group and picking up the pace
As with the last draft, there are some spots in this draft that need more attention than others -- the same spots, really -- and so the pace of my revisions varies as I move through different sections. The first four chapters continue to be where I have to work carefully. I guess I don't establish the story as well as I carry it out in the middle. As a result, the work was slower going up until today when I passed out of the set up material, and now I'm cruising for awhile. I'm through pg. 77 and chapter 7. (The chapter numbering is going to be changing at the conclusion of this draft, and I've already grown the total by 5 pages.) It's hard to predict the pace in the future. I'd guess about a solid week of work without any interruptions, but I do have a lot going on in the next couple weeks.
I'm moving into an exciting new phase of my writing life. For the first time I'm in a writer's group, formed with a friend and some of her MFA classmates. We met for the first time last night to get to know one another and establish ground rules. Naturally, I'll keep their work in confidence.
I'm looking forward to it a lot, but I am struggling to figure out how best to use their attention. There's a limit to how many pages I can impose on them, and being a novelist who gets my work through several drafts before I start feeling the need to share, I'm not sure what is smart to give them. I don't expect to have any new raw pages. I'm not even sure which of the 3 books I have in play to give them parts of. I think I'm just going to have to make a choice without a lot of confidence behind it and go with the flow until I have a better sense of what kind of feedback I can get in this kind of context.
I expect to hear from my other reader (of the 3rd draft) before the end of the week. And I have another definite reader lined up for whenever I finish the 4th draft.
I'm moving into an exciting new phase of my writing life. For the first time I'm in a writer's group, formed with a friend and some of her MFA classmates. We met for the first time last night to get to know one another and establish ground rules. Naturally, I'll keep their work in confidence.
I'm looking forward to it a lot, but I am struggling to figure out how best to use their attention. There's a limit to how many pages I can impose on them, and being a novelist who gets my work through several drafts before I start feeling the need to share, I'm not sure what is smart to give them. I don't expect to have any new raw pages. I'm not even sure which of the 3 books I have in play to give them parts of. I think I'm just going to have to make a choice without a lot of confidence behind it and go with the flow until I have a better sense of what kind of feedback I can get in this kind of context.
I expect to hear from my other reader (of the 3rd draft) before the end of the week. And I have another definite reader lined up for whenever I finish the 4th draft.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
On to the fourth draft
The last two days I've been doing the work I thought I would be doing -- trying to make the conflicts clearer, scene-by-scene, on the typescript. It involves marking up the paper copy adn then sometimes deciding the the cutting and pasting is radical enough that I need to be on the keyboard and then keying in all my changes from the paper copy. So far I'm through 27 pages and three chapters. It's hard to tell if I'm really doing any good or just plastering over serious problems that I haven't faced yet or creating clumsy solutions. I have a bad hunch that I won't be able to tell for a long time -- until I've gone all the way through, then let it sit for a few weeks to get some distance and then reading it again.
It's a time of great uncertainty.
I'm also making the whole thing longer, bit by bit. So far I've added one new page for every chapter and about 1,000 words. Hopefully that trend doesn't continue. At this same rate, I would 9,000 words by the end, and that's not gonna fly.
On to Chapter 4 next. Probably not tomorrow, though.
It's a time of great uncertainty.
I'm also making the whole thing longer, bit by bit. So far I've added one new page for every chapter and about 1,000 words. Hopefully that trend doesn't continue. At this same rate, I would 9,000 words by the end, and that's not gonna fly.
On to Chapter 4 next. Probably not tomorrow, though.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Focusing on conflict
I haven't been journaling about it, but I have been working hard since last Tuesday, and I've been learning a lot that I do wish I had time to note.
I decided I had had enough time away or couldn't stand any more time away. So I printed it out and read it on paper for the first time. One good thing about working on a children's book is that it's easier to read it in a rush and get an overall impression. It took me about 7 hours over two days.
It's not easy for me to read that way, because as I go along I see lots of opportunities for sentence-level corrections and rewrites. On the one hand, the more I do that, the more I undermine the work of reading it for the overall impression, which is really important. On the other hand, I know that the more times I read it, the less able I get to actually spot errors and clumsiness, so you want to grab them when I see them. It took me awhile, but I really had to train myself to leave the editing pen sitting on the table. I ended up marking errors and putting a check mark next to anything that seemed clumsy and needing a revision so that I could keep close to a natural reading pace.
My overall impression was mixed. I didn't feel great about what I saw. There are a lot of moments in the book that I'm proud of, but there was something lacking that prevents it all from hanging together, and I realized I still have some significant work ahead of me.
I'm probably fooling myself, but I think I have a handle on what the problem is. The conclusion outshines the set up. It answers questions that weren't clearly asked, so the climactic scenes don't feel like they matter.
To fix that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about and freewriting about and notetaking on conflict. That seems like a pretty obvious aspect of fiction, but as I often have to point out to my students, it can be elusive. When we're struggling and just want the work to be done, it's easy to confuse a problem with conflict. The character has a problem isn't a conflict. The character has a problem AND something else may make a conflict. For my students, and now for me, it can be unexpectedly difficult to get clear on that.
And then when I have a good sense of conflict, it usually only works in isolation. When I start matching it up with what is actually going on in at different parts of the draft I can see a lot of daylight. Which leads to a lot of brainstorming and notetaking about the revisions I could make, once I get over the panic.
And I'm not sure I do have a good sense of what the conflict is to begin with. It remains elusive.
Anyway, I'm trying not to rush it, or I would have started the next rewrite yesterday. I keep trying to see if I can get a sharper sense of the story first. Once I do start the next draft, I think what it will be is going through scene-by-scene to make it focus on and further the central conflicts.
It feels like a long way to go. One mark in my favor so far is that the language felt pretty tight on the read through. I didn't have a whole lot of those checkmarks. I don't think there's a lot of sentence-level clumsiness or drag. When I do get to work on a polishing draft, I think I'll want to try and punch up the energy and playfulness of language.
I decided I had had enough time away or couldn't stand any more time away. So I printed it out and read it on paper for the first time. One good thing about working on a children's book is that it's easier to read it in a rush and get an overall impression. It took me about 7 hours over two days.
It's not easy for me to read that way, because as I go along I see lots of opportunities for sentence-level corrections and rewrites. On the one hand, the more I do that, the more I undermine the work of reading it for the overall impression, which is really important. On the other hand, I know that the more times I read it, the less able I get to actually spot errors and clumsiness, so you want to grab them when I see them. It took me awhile, but I really had to train myself to leave the editing pen sitting on the table. I ended up marking errors and putting a check mark next to anything that seemed clumsy and needing a revision so that I could keep close to a natural reading pace.
My overall impression was mixed. I didn't feel great about what I saw. There are a lot of moments in the book that I'm proud of, but there was something lacking that prevents it all from hanging together, and I realized I still have some significant work ahead of me.
I'm probably fooling myself, but I think I have a handle on what the problem is. The conclusion outshines the set up. It answers questions that weren't clearly asked, so the climactic scenes don't feel like they matter.
To fix that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about and freewriting about and notetaking on conflict. That seems like a pretty obvious aspect of fiction, but as I often have to point out to my students, it can be elusive. When we're struggling and just want the work to be done, it's easy to confuse a problem with conflict. The character has a problem isn't a conflict. The character has a problem AND something else may make a conflict. For my students, and now for me, it can be unexpectedly difficult to get clear on that.
And then when I have a good sense of conflict, it usually only works in isolation. When I start matching it up with what is actually going on in at different parts of the draft I can see a lot of daylight. Which leads to a lot of brainstorming and notetaking about the revisions I could make, once I get over the panic.
And I'm not sure I do have a good sense of what the conflict is to begin with. It remains elusive.
Anyway, I'm trying not to rush it, or I would have started the next rewrite yesterday. I keep trying to see if I can get a sharper sense of the story first. Once I do start the next draft, I think what it will be is going through scene-by-scene to make it focus on and further the central conflicts.
It feels like a long way to go. One mark in my favor so far is that the language felt pretty tight on the read through. I didn't have a whole lot of those checkmarks. I don't think there's a lot of sentence-level clumsiness or drag. When I do get to work on a polishing draft, I think I'll want to try and punch up the energy and playfulness of language.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Time off and working on a summary
I'm in the middle of my second week off from the book. It's driving me a little bit crazy, and I'm having trouble turning my focus to anything else. It's a little bit like separation anxiety, I guess. I've done a lot of moping around. But so far I've resisted working on it any. Partly I don't want to nullify the work my first reader is doing; I want to wait to hear from her. And party I know the more distance I can create the better it will be for the next revision. As soon as I hear from that reader, though, I'm off and running.
Today I indulged a little by making my first attempts at writing a summary. I know from my previous book that I need summaries of different lengths for the purpose of soliciting agents, and it takes many many drafts to fine tune one, so it's good to get an early start so it can percolate. It's also a good exercise for the revision process, since it forces me to think about what is primary and to align the intentions with the reality. I'm probably fooling myself, but my first attempt at a summary seems to be in alignment with what's really in the book.
Maybe.
I don't really know.
Today I indulged a little by making my first attempts at writing a summary. I know from my previous book that I need summaries of different lengths for the purpose of soliciting agents, and it takes many many drafts to fine tune one, so it's good to get an early start so it can percolate. It's also a good exercise for the revision process, since it forces me to think about what is primary and to align the intentions with the reality. I'm probably fooling myself, but my first attempt at a summary seems to be in alignment with what's really in the book.
Maybe.
I don't really know.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
First reader -- time off
I guess I'm officially at the end of the third draft. I printed it out the other day for the first time and mailed it to my sister, who will be my first reader except my wife. I learned from the last book that this step helps shift me into a different critical space. Just the thought of the paper coming out of the printer and the image of some other person holding it usually helps me see the work differently. I start to imagine it through other eyes. Which means I start to see problems and issues that I was too tunnel blind to see before.
Still, I feel pretty good about it. Before we put it in the mail, I listened while my wife read a couple chapters out loud, and I liked what I heard. I could hear a few clunky sentences and one scene that still drags too long, but nothing that made me despair. My sense is that after 7 months and 3 drafts is in shape as good as the first book after 2 years and 9 drafts. (It's also half as long, so that helps.)
Which still means it needs work. I'm chomping at the bit to get more readers, but the smart play is to hold off for awhile and see what else I can figure out on my own. And I need to get some more distance for that, so I really am taking some time off. At least a week and maybe longer if I can find some way to keep myself away from it next week. We'll see how quickly my first reader gets back to me and what energy that sets in motion.
Still, I feel pretty good about it. Before we put it in the mail, I listened while my wife read a couple chapters out loud, and I liked what I heard. I could hear a few clunky sentences and one scene that still drags too long, but nothing that made me despair. My sense is that after 7 months and 3 drafts is in shape as good as the first book after 2 years and 9 drafts. (It's also half as long, so that helps.)
Which still means it needs work. I'm chomping at the bit to get more readers, but the smart play is to hold off for awhile and see what else I can figure out on my own. And I need to get some more distance for that, so I really am taking some time off. At least a week and maybe longer if I can find some way to keep myself away from it next week. We'll see how quickly my first reader gets back to me and what energy that sets in motion.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Crankin
It's hard to summarize the work I've been doing, but there's been a lot of it to be sure. I supposed if I was putting in my usual 90-120 minute sessions everyday then my guess of 5 weeks for this draft would be accurate, but I've been putting in a lot more time than that. I can't seem to stop working on it. It's good to be in this space.
I'm kind of unofficially done with draft 3. I reached the end of it this morning. But as usual I have a certain number of items I want to consider and tidy up before drawing a line between this and whatever comes next. There's no rush, and given some of the other stuff I have going on this week, I'll probably take the rest of the week.
I think the book is a lot stronger than it was two weeks ago. I really like some of the changes I made. We'll see what happens after I get some distance and start seeing it through someone else's eyes. I hope that comes soon. I feel like it's close to time to get some critique from other readers. If that follows the pattern I'll be severely disillusioned before long.
One thing I definitely know is improved is the length. I expected to get some back in this draft, but I really thought I would have to make another focused pass later in the "kill your darlings" mode. That might not be necessary, because just in an organic way I made changes that brought it from 325 pages to 280 pages and from 76,000 words to 67,500 words -- 11%. My goal was 65,000 words, but I'm quite comfortable with the length of it right now. Any cutting from here on will be just because something doesn't belong.
I'm going to have to turn my attention to some of my paying work for the next few days, so that will be slowing me down.
I'm kind of unofficially done with draft 3. I reached the end of it this morning. But as usual I have a certain number of items I want to consider and tidy up before drawing a line between this and whatever comes next. There's no rush, and given some of the other stuff I have going on this week, I'll probably take the rest of the week.
I think the book is a lot stronger than it was two weeks ago. I really like some of the changes I made. We'll see what happens after I get some distance and start seeing it through someone else's eyes. I hope that comes soon. I feel like it's close to time to get some critique from other readers. If that follows the pattern I'll be severely disillusioned before long.
One thing I definitely know is improved is the length. I expected to get some back in this draft, but I really thought I would have to make another focused pass later in the "kill your darlings" mode. That might not be necessary, because just in an organic way I made changes that brought it from 325 pages to 280 pages and from 76,000 words to 67,500 words -- 11%. My goal was 65,000 words, but I'm quite comfortable with the length of it right now. Any cutting from here on will be just because something doesn't belong.
I'm going to have to turn my attention to some of my paying work for the next few days, so that will be slowing me down.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Lots of progress
When did I check in last? A ton of work ago, whenever it was.
I don't know how good the work is, but I'm feeling pretty good about it right now. There have been some ups and downs.
I did a few days of brainstorming, contemplating, digging until I felt I had found the main thread and started working to tie everything around that. In the process, for the record, the draft expanded to what I hope will be its maximum length -- 76,000 words and 320 pages -- mostly in the first 20% where I was doing a lot of careful work trying to make sure every scene in the set up was hitting hard.
I was feeling pretty good about it then and over the weekend asked me wife to read that section,a and she splashed cold water on me. She feels it's too slow to get started primarily and doesn't focus enough on the main story. That put me in the doldrums for awhile.
But I came up with three possible solutions and for the most part, up until this morning, I've been working really closely with that same 60 pages. The solutions included cutting out one prologueish chapter entirely, cutting out a plot thread that is set up in the opening and revisited throughout and reminding myself that less is more when it comes to characterization, which allowed me to pull out some anecdotes and backstory about my character. In the end, I decided to keep the first chapter.
The result was being able to subtract 12 pages -- 20% -- from the set up. I've kept moving in the right direction since then and have it down to 295 pages and 70,000 words. I'm up to around page 100 on this read-through and hope that the rest of it will go faster than work on the set up did.
I do have a nagging feeling that I can't really see it well enough to judge anymore. We'll see what happens at the end of this draft, but I'll probably have to consider seriously the idea of some time away from it to get some perspective. I'm getting pretty eager for feedback from readers, too.
I don't know how good the work is, but I'm feeling pretty good about it right now. There have been some ups and downs.
I did a few days of brainstorming, contemplating, digging until I felt I had found the main thread and started working to tie everything around that. In the process, for the record, the draft expanded to what I hope will be its maximum length -- 76,000 words and 320 pages -- mostly in the first 20% where I was doing a lot of careful work trying to make sure every scene in the set up was hitting hard.
I was feeling pretty good about it then and over the weekend asked me wife to read that section,a and she splashed cold water on me. She feels it's too slow to get started primarily and doesn't focus enough on the main story. That put me in the doldrums for awhile.
But I came up with three possible solutions and for the most part, up until this morning, I've been working really closely with that same 60 pages. The solutions included cutting out one prologueish chapter entirely, cutting out a plot thread that is set up in the opening and revisited throughout and reminding myself that less is more when it comes to characterization, which allowed me to pull out some anecdotes and backstory about my character. In the end, I decided to keep the first chapter.
The result was being able to subtract 12 pages -- 20% -- from the set up. I've kept moving in the right direction since then and have it down to 295 pages and 70,000 words. I'm up to around page 100 on this read-through and hope that the rest of it will go faster than work on the set up did.
I do have a nagging feeling that I can't really see it well enough to judge anymore. We'll see what happens at the end of this draft, but I'll probably have to consider seriously the idea of some time away from it to get some perspective. I'm getting pretty eager for feedback from readers, too.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Egyptian literature
I know almost nothing about it. And to prove it, here is an old review I wrote of Being Abbas el Abd by Ahmed Alaidy, which is about the alienated youth of Cairo, abuse of power and cellphones.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Atmospheric Disturbances
I started on Rivka Gilchen's Atmospheric Disturbances last night. I can't remember why it's in my to-be-read pile. Was she one of the New Yorker 40 under 40 or something? Notable book of 2009? Anyway, whatever it was that recommended it to me, I've forgotten it, so this is one of those rare occasions when I'm starting a book with almost nothing in the way of preconceptions or expectations. I didn't even read the back cover summary. (I have it in paperback.) That''s an interesting kind of reading experience that I would like to explore more some other time. (A truly random experience is pretty difficult to create. It would probably, just based on the numbers out there, lead to some kind of genre fiction that I don't appreciate. I guess the books in my to-be-read pile are at least pre-screened to be literary fiction in some sense. And I know it's not a classic. The price sticker on it reminds me that I paid full price for it using a gift card to a store I don't normally go to because it's not nearby. All of those details do set up kinds of vague expectations.)
Anyway, I haven't read enough of it to say much about it except that so far it reminds me a lot of my first encounter with Paul Auster's New York trilogy. Which is a good thing. I liked those stories a lot when I first read them about fifteen years ago.
Anyway, I haven't read enough of it to say much about it except that so far it reminds me a lot of my first encounter with Paul Auster's New York trilogy. Which is a good thing. I liked those stories a lot when I first read them about fifteen years ago.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Calling an end to the second draft
I changed my mind about what I said yesterday. I'm deciding I'm done with draft 2 and am moving on to draft 3.
These are totally artificial divisions, so the milestone is similarly artificial. I guess what it really means is that I'm deciding that I need to focus on a different category of revision at this point, and it's comforting to tidy up the typescript, do a "save as," make note of the word count at this point and establish a schedule/time line.
The different category is what I guess should be called "developmental editing." I wish I had a developmental editor to work with me on that, but it's a self-help world now. The work I think would be most productive right now is digging in deep to find the heart of the story, find what the character really wants, figure out the arc of her emotional development and then figure out all the related writing and shaping that has to happen to bring that story into focus. It's scary work, because it can mean disassembling a lot of the machinery, and it can mean seemingly small adjustments that later turn out to introduce a fatal wobble in the machinery. It will almost certainly mean writing a lot of new material. My mantra during this stage of the first book was "don't fix -- dig." Well, I hope there's less need of that this time around, but formally that's the stage I'm at now.
This means ignoring a lot of the spackling work that's still left to do and that was the focus of the second draft. I've decided it's no longer productive or helpful to do that until I get the bigger picture questions sorted out. I guess I have been dealing with two kinds of problems -- basic intelligibility/consistency of plot and bringing some craft to the clumsy parts. I took care of all the first kind. The clumsy parts are better left alone for now.
It's hard to get a perfect bead on the word count and page count because each draft has different kinds of editing notes lingering around inside it. When those get cut out, I won't be actually shortening the book. The typescript is 317 pages and 75,000 words. My best estimate is that is actually about 73,000 words. So it grew by about 3,000 words in the last draft. Those are wild estimates, though. I'm a long way from my goal of getting it down to 65,000 words, but I suppose I'm a long way from finished.
Which takes me to the question of time line. Before the start of the last draft, I guessed that by this stage I would be concentrating on polishing, which would move along very quickly. Obviously, I'm not working on polishing and whatever I'm doing next can't go quickly.
I don't know. It's not just hard to predict the pace. It's hard to know what the work even is. It's a lot of sitting around thinking about the text instead of working on it. Let's say I had a definite object in mind like an image of the emotional arc of the character, which is probably way to simplistic a way to understand what I'm gong for. Then I might be able to say that I'll start applying that object like a stencil over the typescript scene-by-scene and re-cutting it, and that might take something like the 4 weeks that the last draft took.
I don't really believe that's how it will work, but let's use it as a basis. I'm going to guess that second part will actually go faster -- 3 weeks instead of 4. And I'm going to arbitrarily say that the "figuring out" part will take 2 weeks, which is incidentally how far ahead I am on my second draft time line.
That makes 5 working weeks total, starting from next Monday. (I have some paying work I have to concentrate on.) Which makes April Fool's Day my target.
Ok. That's what I'll do. I hope.
These are totally artificial divisions, so the milestone is similarly artificial. I guess what it really means is that I'm deciding that I need to focus on a different category of revision at this point, and it's comforting to tidy up the typescript, do a "save as," make note of the word count at this point and establish a schedule/time line.
The different category is what I guess should be called "developmental editing." I wish I had a developmental editor to work with me on that, but it's a self-help world now. The work I think would be most productive right now is digging in deep to find the heart of the story, find what the character really wants, figure out the arc of her emotional development and then figure out all the related writing and shaping that has to happen to bring that story into focus. It's scary work, because it can mean disassembling a lot of the machinery, and it can mean seemingly small adjustments that later turn out to introduce a fatal wobble in the machinery. It will almost certainly mean writing a lot of new material. My mantra during this stage of the first book was "don't fix -- dig." Well, I hope there's less need of that this time around, but formally that's the stage I'm at now.
This means ignoring a lot of the spackling work that's still left to do and that was the focus of the second draft. I've decided it's no longer productive or helpful to do that until I get the bigger picture questions sorted out. I guess I have been dealing with two kinds of problems -- basic intelligibility/consistency of plot and bringing some craft to the clumsy parts. I took care of all the first kind. The clumsy parts are better left alone for now.
It's hard to get a perfect bead on the word count and page count because each draft has different kinds of editing notes lingering around inside it. When those get cut out, I won't be actually shortening the book. The typescript is 317 pages and 75,000 words. My best estimate is that is actually about 73,000 words. So it grew by about 3,000 words in the last draft. Those are wild estimates, though. I'm a long way from my goal of getting it down to 65,000 words, but I suppose I'm a long way from finished.
Which takes me to the question of time line. Before the start of the last draft, I guessed that by this stage I would be concentrating on polishing, which would move along very quickly. Obviously, I'm not working on polishing and whatever I'm doing next can't go quickly.
I don't know. It's not just hard to predict the pace. It's hard to know what the work even is. It's a lot of sitting around thinking about the text instead of working on it. Let's say I had a definite object in mind like an image of the emotional arc of the character, which is probably way to simplistic a way to understand what I'm gong for. Then I might be able to say that I'll start applying that object like a stencil over the typescript scene-by-scene and re-cutting it, and that might take something like the 4 weeks that the last draft took.
I don't really believe that's how it will work, but let's use it as a basis. I'm going to guess that second part will actually go faster -- 3 weeks instead of 4. And I'm going to arbitrarily say that the "figuring out" part will take 2 weeks, which is incidentally how far ahead I am on my second draft time line.
That makes 5 working weeks total, starting from next Monday. (I have some paying work I have to concentrate on.) Which makes April Fool's Day my target.
Ok. That's what I'll do. I hope.
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